Three years of time have passed since the last full release of g4u. Here's a list of what's new / changes in g4u 2.4:

• Major new supported device types include bluetooth keyboards and SD/MMC cards - feedback highly appreciated!
• Lots of new drivers. Too many to list, please see the g4u section of my blog at http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/blog.html?-tags=g4u for details.
• Based on the NetBSD development version from Sep 2009
• Source builds native and without root privileges on NetBSD 5.0 and crossbuilds also without root privileges from Mac OS X (tested) and probably others (untested; expected: Solaris, Linux).

What is g4u? ``g4u ("ghosting for unix") is a NetBSD-based bootfloppy/CD-ROM that allows easy cloning of PC harddisks to deploy a common setup on a number of PCs using FTP. The floppy/CD offers two functions. The first is to upload the compressed image of a local harddisk to a FTP server, the other is to restore that image via FTP, uncompress it and write it back to disk. Network configuration is fetched via DHCP. As the harddisk is processed as an image, any filesystem and operating system can be deployed using g4u. Easy cloning of local disks as well as partitions is also supported.''

Get it now:

• ISO
• compressed ISO
• First floppy
• 2nd floppy
• 3rd floppy
• all 3 floppies
• sources

• Make this build with NetBSD-current as of 2009-08-30
• Trim kernel some more (NFS server, quotas)
• Put only on the CD what's really needed (31MB->5MB)
• Drivers for:
  • Marvell Hercules-I/II SATA controller
  • SiI SteelVine SATA controllers
  • Attansic/Atheros L1 Gigabit Ethernet cards
  • Attansic/Atheros L1E Ethernet cards & PHY
  • SD/MMC cards as media - feedback highly appreciated!

What is g4u? ``g4u ("ghosting for unix") is a NetBSD-based bootfloppy/CD-ROM that allows easy cloning of PC harddisks to deploy a common setup on a number of PCs using FTP. The floppy/CD offers two functions. The first is to upload the compressed image of a local harddisk to a FTP server, the other is to restore that image via FTP, uncompress it and write it back to disk. Network configuration is fetched via DHCP. As the harddisk is processed as an image, any filesystem and operating system can be deployed using g4u. Easy cloning of local disks as well as partitions is also supported.''

Get it now:

• ISO
• compressed ISO
• First floppy
• 2nd floppy
• 3rd floppy
• all 3 floppies
• sources

• Support Bluetooth keyboard and USB hubs
• ACPI support is enabled by default. SMP is, too, but that's not really used in g4u; They can both be disabled form the bootloader in case of problems.
• Moved away from GENERIC kernel back to customized kernel, to avoid bloat through too many drivers that aren't needed in g4u (audio, video, ...)
• The build structure was adjusted to NetBSD's latest framework, which loads the kernel from CD, then loads the ramdisk, too, before starting the kernel. No more kernel+ramdisk for now. (Need to re-evaluate situation for PXE)
• Drivers for:
  • AMD CS5535/CS5536 and Intel PIIX4 PCI bridges
  • Areca SATA PCI RAID controllers
  • Workbit NinjaATA-32 CardBus IDE controllers
  • Realtek 8139C+/8169/8169S/8110S cardbus wlan cards
  • Geode CSC and ScanLogic SL811HS USB controllers
  • Intel PRO/Wireless 4965AGN
  • JMicron JMC2[56]0 ethernet
  • Atheros L2 Fast-Ethernet
  • Realtek 8139C+/8169/8169S/8110S cardbus network cards
• ... and any driver updates, bug fixes and other enhancements from NetBSD-current
• This version of g4u was again cross-compiled on Mac OS X. To get your own build, grap NetBSD-current sources from yesterday (20081122), unpack the g4u source .tgz then "cd .../src ; sh g4u-build" and report what happens.

What is g4u? ``g4u ("ghosting for unix") is a NetBSD-based bootfloppy/CD-ROM that allows easy cloning of PC harddisks to deploy a common setup on a number of PCs using FTP. The floppy/CD offers two functions. The first is to upload the compressed image of a local harddisk to a FTP server, the other is to restore that image via FTP, uncompress it and write it back to disk. Network configuration is fetched via DHCP. As the harddisk is processed as an image, any filesystem and operating system can be deployed using g4u. Easy cloning of local disks as well as partitions is also supported.''

Get it now:

• ISO
• compressed ISO
• First floppy
• 2nd floppy
• 3rd floppy
• all 3 floppies
• sources

• ACPI Support enabled
• Support Bluetooth keyboard and USB hubs
• Drivers for AMD CS5535/CS5536 and Intel PIIX4 PCI bridges
• Driver for the Areca SATA PCI RAID controllers
• Driver for Workbit NinjaATA-32 CardBus IDE controllers
• Driver for Realtek 8139C+/8169/8169S/8110S cardbus wlan cards
• Driver for Geode CSC and ScanLogic SL811HS USB controllers
• ... and any driver updates, bug fixes and other enhancements from NetBSD-current

BTW, as a funny side note, this version was not built on NetBSD but on Mac OS X - the procedure should be the same on both systems (and maybe other Unix systems, like e.g. Linux): Get NetBSD-current sources as of today (20080120), run "cd .../src ; sh g4u-build" and report what happens.

[Tags: g4u] [Slashdot It!]

• ISO
• compressed ISO
• First floppy
• 2nd floppy
• 3rd floppy
• all 3 floppies
• sources

Users of PERC- and Broadcom-equipped Dell-Servers, please test and report back success or failure. Include dmesg snipped if failure!

[Tags: g4u] [Slashdot It!]

Either way, I've finally setup a working development environment for g4u again using NetBSD in Parallels and the g4u sources from the g4u 2.3 release. After the neccessary adjustments to match g4u against latest g4u, I have a working build environment again.

Things to look forward to include a 2.4alpha1 release that has latest sources (for backup reasons :-), and support for Bluetooth keyboards as well as latest drivers, esp. ones for the PERC RAID controllers and Broadcom ethernet controllers in Dell servers that people requested repeatedly, and that have finally showed up in NetBSD. Furthermore, there may be kernels with and without ACPI support. Last, I'm wondering if anyone is still using the floppy version of g4u... Anyone? Send mail!

[Tags: g4u] [Slashdot It!]

(Thanks to "skrueger" for pointing me at this!)

[Tags: g4u, solaris] [Slashdot It!]

Multiple license can be purchased for more machines, I'm open for discussing volume discounts. I will of course send you an invoice for every purchase! Please contact me by email if you're interested.

Thank you for your support of g4u!

[Tags: g4u] [Slashdot It!]

• Linuxdays Chemnitz: I was only there for my presentation on sunday, due to not feeling too well the days before. Still, Stefan, Jörg, Charlie and many others staffed the booth just fine, and I think every single household in and around Chemnitz has a NetBSD install and/or Live CD now. :)

  Related talks to mention are Stefan Schumacher's talk on hardening systems with systrace and deleting data. My own talk was not too NetBSD specific, showing an application on how to implement dynamic DNS with some retail web/domain hoster. Slides for my talks are available as OpenOffice .ODP and as PDF. (I'll reconsider the move from TeX/prosper to OpenOffice after it was NOT as easy as I expected to find a machine running OOo for presentation purpose, after my laptop's harddisk crashed on the way to Chemnitz!)

• While at roadshows: Stefan Schumacher has made DIN A4 pkgsrc flyers in english and german language.

• NetBSD's puff-based FUSE implementation "refuse" is now in a state to also run the NTFS-g3 filesystem, which offers read/write support for NTFS. It's available from pkgsrc/filesystems/fuse-ntfs-3g.

• Google News found me an article that NetBSD stack supports Geode NAS design: ``Wasabi Systems Inc.'s BSD-based NAS (network attached storage) software stack now supports a Geode-based reference design from AMD. Wasabi Storage Builder for NAS, combined with AMD's Geode LX NAS RDK (reference design kit), provides a secure, reliable platform for the development of NAS devices, according to Wasabi. ''

  While that's all fine for Wasabi, it should be noted that whatever the company Wasabi offers is not automatically available in the freely available operating system called NetBSD. Integration efforts would have to happen first, so the headline of that article is unfortunately misleading if not to say plain wrong!

• Another article that's more to the point: Julio M. Merino Vidal has worked on getting multiboot support into NetBSD, and in his article ``Making NetBSD Multiboot-Compatible'' he talks more about it.

• Andrew Doran has done lots of work on NetBSD's thread and SMP implementation recently, and he has made a comparison between performance of the Scheduler-Activations-based code in NetBSD 4 and the one that will be in NetBSD 5 (AKA NetBSD-current, currently numbered as 4.99.13). See his mail to tech-kern or watch the images for 'make cleandir' on an empty source tree and the MySQL supersmack benchmark.

• Google runs another Summer of Code, and this year it's not clear upfront who will be allowed as mentoring organizations. NetBSD is ready to participate again, and there's an official announcement from NetBSD about this, including pointers to our suggested/wanted list of projects and the project application HowTo. People interested in submitting a project proposal (via google!) are encouraged to use the remaining time until the deadline to discuss their proposals on the public NetBSD tech-* lists! (Personally I'll try to stay out of GSoC this year to finish some reallife work. At least that's the plan so far ...)

• Three new security advisories were released:
  • NetBSD Security Advisory 2007-001: Integer overflow in ktruser()
  • NetBSD Security Advisory 2007-002: Integer overflows in Render and DBE extensions
  • NetBSD Security Advisory 2007-003: BIND multiple denial of service vulnerabilities

• Another article that doesn't mention NetBSD but g4u: ``How to Install a New Hard Drive: Tech Clinic'' by Joel Johnson. From the article: `` To make your new drive work like your old drive, you'll need a disk "cloner." There are a myriad of options, from commercial solutions such as the old favorite Ghost from Symantec ($70; symantec.com) and Copy Commander from VCom ($35; v-com.com) to free applications, such as MaxBlast from Maxtor, that come bundled with hard drives. If you're comfortable mucking around with Linux/BSD, I've had great luck with the free g4u application. If you have a local file server, you can even send the disk image from your laptop to an FTP site, install the larger drive, then FTP it back to your laptop, obviating the need for a drive enclosure''.

``Parallels today released a free update to Parallels Desktop for Mac to enhance its virtualization software with a new installation assistant tool, shared networking support, and official compatibility for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. The latest release of Parallels Desktop for Mac also supports Microsoft's recently-released Windows Vista operating system, adds several additional features, and repairs numerous bugs. Parallels Desktop for Mac runs 'guest' operating systems inside a Mac by allowing that operating system to run alongside Mac OS X, managing system resources as the two systems co-exist side-by-side. The latest revision ensures that Solaris guest operating systems don't hang after suspending or resuming, and includes an improved Parallels Tools package. Parallels Desktop now offers full support for OpenBSD 3.8 as a guest operating system, and ensures that the G4U hard disk cloning tool works in virtual machines.''

Someone please go and tell them that they also support NetBSD with that move, and tell the world about that! :-)

[Tags: g4u, parallels] [Slashdot It!]

• CDROM ISOs:
  Compressed -> http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.3.iso.zip
  Uncompressed -> http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.3.iso

• Floppies:
  All of them -> http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.3.fs.zip
  First one -> http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.3-1.fs
  Second one -> http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.3-2.fs

• Source -> http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.3.tgz

The book consists of two parts: the first one talks about IPv6 programming, and the second one lists a number of relevant RFCs. The Programming part includes an overview of the IPv6 APIs, puts emphasis on writing address-independent programming and gives a fair number of guidelines in that area. It then describes details for porting applications to support IPv6, with details on what to look for in client and server code, followed by a number of tips for IPv6 programming. A practical example that shows how existing client and server applications (nail and popa3d) can be changed to support IPv6. The second part of the book consists of 270 (of ~360!) pages of printed RFCs, which is a bit over the top IMHO - if I'd wanted to read them I would know where to find them. On the other hand I have them all in one place, so I guess that can be excused.

Overall the book is rather technical and very much on the spot, written for people with programming and Unix background to learn on how to get the job done without much fluff. Minor nits are the long appendix and that images appear a bit blurry, but that shouldn't stop anyone from reading the book - go for it!

[Tags: books, g4u, ipv6] [Slashdot It!]

Fun stuff so far includes

• Copied a dual drive Tivo
• Saved Novell NetWare server disks
• Copied a Nokia IP330 Checkpoint Firewall 1 boxes
• Install several clusters of firewalls, compute machines, school workstations, etc.

  * Floppies:
    All of them -> http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.3beta3.fs.zip
    First one -> http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.3beta3-1.fs
    Second one -> http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.3beta3-2.fs
    Third one -> http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.3beta3-3.fs

  * CDROMs:
    Compressed -> http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.3beta3.iso.zip
    Uncompressed -> http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.3beta3.iso

  * Source:
    http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.3beta3.tgz
    (There's a g4u-build script in there that should do all the work...
    I'll update the build docs for the final release)

More information is available on the g4u homepage, see http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/#history and http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/.

Enjoy!

[Tags: g4u] [Slashdot It!]

I haven't heared of anyone cloning an Intel-Mac with g4u natively (via Bootcamp, of course) yet, but I guess there's a known-working way to this now. Anyone got some experiences about g4u on an Intel-Mac? Please post to the g4u-help list!

[Tags: g4u, parallels] [Slashdot It!]

Citing from the article, ``The authors show how to use image backups to return a system to a known state with a few commands. [...] g4u [...] is a simple, elegant and well-documented tool that boots a NetBSD kernel''

For those that forgot, g4u ("ghost for unix") is a NetBSD-based bootfloppy/CD-ROM that allows easy cloning of PC harddisks to deploy a common setup on a number of PCs using FTP. The floppy/CD offers two functions. The first is to upload the compressed image of a local harddisk to a FTP server, the other is to restore that image via FTP, uncompress it and write it back to disk. Network configuration is fetched via DHCP. As the harddisk is processed as an image, any filesystem and operating system can be deployed using g4u. Easy cloning of local disks as well as partitions is also supported.

[Tags: Articles, g4u] [Slashdot It!]

Bad news first: I haven't seen any money from Google so far. This is due to their policy that they start paying only after you hit $100US one month, which I didn't do the first month (and that mostly because I enabled this in mid-september). I expect this to change in the future, though.

So what happened so far? The two websites I have Google AdWords on are the g4u homepage and my NetBSD blog. In the past ~2 months, the g4u homepage got about 42.000 hits and the blog got 9.100 hits. On the g4u page, 539 people were interested in the ads displayed, while ads on the blogs were of interest to 180 people. I admit I have no idea how Google determines payment per hit/click, but the money they show I've "earned" is $129 for the g4u homepage and $71 for the blog.

So far that's nothing that will pay my bills, but at least it will pay some food every now and then, or some stuff I could use for future NetBSD booths...

(BTW, if you want to help out in that regard directly: I'm VERY MUCH appreciating more help from the NetBSD community at conferences etc. where NetBSD booths are, after manning the Systems booth alone for three days last week; for the monetary help you can speed that up with paypal ;-)

[Tags: g4u, hubertf] [Slashdot It!]